


Talk to the Stars

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Desert-centric, Gen, Happy Birthday Keith!, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 20:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12464856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Keith knew the desert intimately.In turn, the desert knew him back.For someone who’d always been called a lone wolf, Keith had a much more informed analysis of himself.  He was not a wolf, never would be a wolf.  Wolves had dignity.Keith was a coyote.





	Talk to the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Just something short for my baby boy's birthday! As someone from New Mexico, I have a special love for the desert that I like to think Keith shares. This is mostly about the desert honestly??

Keith knew the desert intimately.

In turn, the desert knew him back.

For someone who’d always been called a lone wolf, Keith had a much more informed analysis of himself.  He was not a wolf, never would be a wolf.  Wolves had dignity.

Keith was a coyote.

He lived off of the trash of others; adaptable to any situation.  Part of him always survived.  But that was all he was good for; survival.  He packed away the vulnerable tears, the weakness, and he met the stone of the earth with clear eyes and an open mind.

And the desert knew that; it accepted him.  The lack of rain scorched the earth, the sky so blue without a cloud in the sky.

Keith’s hands burned when he touched the metal he left outside to rust; Keith cooked eggs on a dusty iron manhole-cover midway out back in his yard and dug goatheads out of his shoes as he crunched through the heat.  Keith pried cans open with his blade and felt how the sun settled into his skin.

Like rain, the sun too had a scent.  Part of it smelled like suntan lotion, but part of it felt like grit and dust, like he’d been coated in an invisible powder.

His body ached, roasted, sweat, and hardened under the desert sun.  “Survive this,” it said to him, “and you can survive anything.”

So his skin grew callouses and his ankles grew stronger and his rubber bands tying back his hair melted until the elastic snapped.  And his throat was always dry, his eyes always squinting off into the distance.  He adapted.  He survived.

Not everything was a struggle however; like a mother, the desert gently woke Keith to chilled skin and the most beautiful sunrises.  Each night was filled with so many stars that Keith didn't know how there could possibly be so little back at the Garrison.  Out here, the sun and the moon ruled the earth so strongly that the sands felt like the tides; life pushed and pulled by celestial beings so far away, and Keith was just another being caught up in their power.

Keith looked back out into the desert and thought of it as home.  No other place allowed him his solitude or was as forgiving of his thinking.

To anyone else, Keith hadn't been normal.  But when he was all alone, it was easy enough to feel that normal was never something that existed.  When Keith curled up on a dusty, cracked leather couch in his shack, he could lose his head in the memories, in whatever it was that he felt out here.

As powerful as the desert was, there was something more, and he didn't know why only he could feel it.  He was lost out here, drawn to it.

But being lost felt like it had its own kind of strength; Keith had freedom beyond his wildest dreams.  His legs could take him anywhere he needed to go, his heart would pound away in his chest, his body just a tool for the endless stream of his thoughts.  He could be lost and enjoy it, because there was something so unchanging about the desert. 

There was a pattern.  Summer would scorch the land until late summer brought the monsoons.  The arroyos would flood, the thunderstorms boom, lightning crack, the rain would pound, and Keith would go outside and dance in it.  Nothing had ever felt more like life.  Autumn came with so little fanfare that Keith didn't notice until winter was knocking on the desert's doorstep.  And with winter, the dusting of dry snow, coating the earth splattered white and brown.  Spring whipped up the dust in miniature tornados, spring brought the heat back, and the cycle would repeat itself.  Every year, unchanging. 

Keith felt like he too existed outside of time.

But where there was life, there was death.

Once, Puebloan people lived out here, Keith thought.  Once, ancient hands knew this desert like he did.  Ancient people walked where he walked, and he could feel them still in the air, walking with him.  They were nothing but ghosts on the wind, the footprint in the dust, the faint sound of drums, the rustle of grass on a windless day.  They allowed him to walk among them as one.

His hands, Keith thought, letting coarse dirt and rock crumble through his fingers, were the paws of a coyote.  Whoever he’d been before, it didn't matter out here.  Out here, all he’d been before washed away in the desert rain.

Finding the caves, the carvings, that didn't change anything.  Keith was purposeless; all he did was survive.  He had nothing else.

A comet was just a comet.  Why should he care about the stars?

They talk enough to him right where he was.

And that's enough.  There's no ache in his heart; at least not one Keith acknowledges.  There's a part of him that, despite how much it has been hurt, survives, because it too is a coyote.  And this part will never stop crying out for someone else’s touch.  Keith will never be able to kill it.

So the stars aren't close enough and he is never happy.

As he reaches out, he decides if he can't kill his weakness, then the least he can do is reach out, and talk to the stars back.  They’ll guide him.

Keith is a coyote, but he will always feel drawn to call out to the sky.


End file.
